2009-11-01
- Papaya farmers can be a funny sort. Ask them if they’d rather have a boy or girl, and without hesitation every last one of them will say “hermaphrodite”—if they’re talking about papayas, of course. A plant biologist at U of I is working to grant them their wish. Papayas are male, female, or hermaphrodite, but only hermaphrodites produce the flavorful fruit that’s sold commercially. This is an...
2009-11-01 - A recent study by U of I psychologists indicates that amphetamine abuse by adolescents can lead to potentially significant memory loss as adults even long after they’ve stopped taking the stimulant.In animal studies conducted by psychology professor Joshua Gulley and graduate student Jessica Stanis, the findings were most pronounced in short-term or “...
2009-11-01 - One and one still make two, just like they did in the 1800s. The problem, say educators, is that some math classrooms still operate basically the same way they did in the 1800s, too. Enter Math Teacher Link, an LAS outreach program aimed toward bringing math teaching up-to-date with the computer era. For hundreds of years, says coordinator Tom Anderson, math teaching was a static art, with...
2009-11-01 - Confetti filled the city’s skies when Rio de Janiero was named the host of the 2016 Olympics, breaking the hearts of Chicagoans and making Brazil the first South American country to host the games. But like so many things in Latin America, the Olympics raise both hopes and fears. “We are emotionally with Rio,” says Nils Jacobsen, an LAS history...
2009-11-01 - Months after the building closed, the class bells still ring in Lincoln Hall and students still wander in looking for instructors—workers turn back three or four of them a day—but the renovation is officially underway after a ceremony to honor the iconic structure’s past and describe its future. A crowd heard speeches by University officials and learned how Lincoln Hall will look after the...
2009-10-01 - Ken Burns, director of such acclaimed documentaries as The Civil War and Baseball, has now focused his spotlight on America’s national park system through The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The six-part documentary, spanning 12 hours, is a great work; but it still leaves out a lot, says Robert Pahre, an LAS political...
2009-10-01 - Chemists at the University of Illinois have designed a small molecule that blocks an aberrant pathway associated with myotonic dystrophy type 1, the most common form of muscular dystrophy. The new compound, soon to be tested in cells, binds tightly to its target, an abnormally elongated RNA that hijacks part of the normal cellular machinery and brings on symptoms of the disease. The newly...
2009-10-01 - Four LAS alums have each been recognized for his or her body of work—a full career of groundbreaking achievements. But in 2009, a common thread runs throughout these bodies of work—and that is the human body itself. Each of the winners of the 2009 LAS Alumni Achievement Award has delved into the mysteries of the body, from genetics to disease to the human brain.Over 135,000 LAS alumni have the...-
2009-10-01 - For some people, wilderness might be any place that doesn’t provide a Wi-Fi connection or fresh towels in the morning. For others, if you even so much as come across another group of humans while hiking, you are not in the wilderness.Robert Pahre, LAS professor of political science, and graduate student Carie Steele took 11 students to Yellowstone and...
2009-10-01 - Among the many surprises associated with the discovery of the oldest known, nearly complete skeleton of a hominid is the finding that this species took its first steps toward bipedalism not on the open, grassy savanna, as generations of scientists—going back to Charles Darwin—hypothesized, but in a wooded landscape.“This species was not a savanna species like Darwin proposed,” says U of I...
2009-10-01 - Between planning, producing, and buying advertising, most public health campaigns run out of cash long before organizers can evaluate whether they made a difference. One University of Illinois professor, however, studied the results of a nationwide child obesity campaign, and the findings were sweeter than candy: Kids are listening. Marian Huhman, a professor of...
2009-10-01 - Anyone alarmed by the disappearance of one of Lincoln Hall’s most endearing features need not worry. Abraham Lincoln may belong to the ages, but his bust still belongs to the University of Illinois.Workers and staff clearing the last items out of a soon-to-be restored Lincoln Hall were struck by the sight of a gaping hole inside the building’s marbled east entrance where the 125-pound bronze bust...
2009-10-01 - Homecoming 2009 was a special one in historic Roger Adams Laboratory, as the weekend marked the completion of the first phase of a multimillion-dollar effort to revitalize laboratories and research support for biochemical research. A ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrated $8 million in upgrades that required two years to complete. The work, sponsored by the campus and the College of Liberal Arts and...
2009-10-01 - Eleven University of Illinois students were nearing the end of a seven-mile hike around Ribbon Lake in Yellowstone National Park. Under a steady drizzle, they had trudged through grassland and a spruce/fir forest—the “Mud March” they called it. They had even come uncomfortably close to a bison bull and spotted fresh grizzly bear prints on the trail. After seven miles in wild country, Professor...
2009-10-01 - See yourself in the future. You are royalty. The words sung by University of Illinois Black Chorus summed up the attitude at this fall’s induction ceremony for Chi Alpha Epsilon, a new honor society implemented by the LAS Access and Achievement Program (AAP), which provides services to underrepresented students through the Equal Opportunities Program and the President’s Award Program. The...
2009-10-01 - “You once told me you wanted to be a doctor,” the physician told her 6-year-old patient, making conversation. But the boy lashed back, screaming and throwing an empty syringe at her. “I’m not going to be anything!” When the attending nurse asked what he was going to be then, the boy replied, “A ghost.” With those words, he turned over in the hospital bed and looked away. This 6-year-old boy was...
2009-10-01 - The large magnet filled an entire corner of the Aberdeen, Scotland, lab. The year was 1979, and this machine was a far cry from the slick magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines used in hospitals today. But primitive as it might look, this was a groundbreaking instrument, responsible for creating the first recognizable image of a whole human body. This device and its innovative “spin warp”...
2009-10-01 - Brock Siegel (PhD, '74, chemistry) still remembers the meeting in February of 1998 where it all began. What started out as a typical budget meeting at Applied Biosystems suddenly took a dramatic turn. At the time, Applied Biosystems was known for developing the world’s best-selling DNA sequencing equipment, which the government was using to map all of the genes within a person. But while...
2009-10-01 - In 1983, Lynn Hartmann (AB, '70, English) was an intern at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics; and like most interns, she was trying to choose a medical specialty—a decision that would set the course for the rest of her life. “I remember seeing a woman with cancer who had been admitted to our hospital on a clinical trial,” Hartmann recalls. “She had already gone through treatment...
2009-10-01 - Govindjee (PhD, '60, biophysics) still remembers the day when he and a fellow student in India were taking a walk and he noticed a spotted, yellowed plant with curling leaves. Instantly, Govindjee was fascinated, and the two students decided they were going to find out what lay behind the plant’s condition. This, Govindjee recalls, was the beginning of a life-long passion for plants and...
2009-10-01 - The teenage boy sat in a chair wearing a most unusual baseball cap. Mounted on the hat was a small video camera, which angled downwards over the bill and pointed directly at his left eye. The camera tracked eye movements as the teen watched an old 1960s movie starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But something was different about this boy as he...
2009-10-01 - Doug Cole (PhD, '74, chemistry) had been at Merck Pharmaceuticals for only a few months when a scientist from across the street came to his research team and announced, “We’ve discovered the most potent biologically active natural product that anyone has seen.” But to make it work, Merck needed the help of its fledgling 15-person natural product chemistry group, which included Cole, a 1974 LAS...
2009-10-01 - Carol D. Lee (BS, '66, teaching of secondary school English) says she will never forget the day she sat in on one particular class at a large urban high school. In her book Culture, Literacy, and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind, Lee describes talking to an articulate African American senior in the class who was clearly upset. “I’ve done everything my teachers asked...
2009-09-01 - In a finding that bodes well for treatment of diseases and conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or asthma, researchers in LAS have deciphered a molecular code that controls inflammation. The finding sheds light on a protein complex called NF-kappa B, often referred to as the master regulator of the immune system. Under normal conditions, NF-kappa B is kept at bay by an inhibitor protein in the...
2009-09-01 - If you’re looking for the ultimate survivor forget the wimps you see on television. A U of I plant biologist has discovered tropical tree seeds that can survive almost 40 years underground before germinating.James Dalling and colleague Tom Brown of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory studied seeds in the soil on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, and...